Corey Taylor Meets John Cusack

Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor was recently conferenced in for a co-interview with John Cusack, star of the upcoming horror movie The Raven and too many other movies to list here. It's an interesting conversation, covering art, music, film, and much more.

The movie has Cusack playing Edgar Allan Poe, and deals with the ways in which art and life intersect and affect one another. Taylor says about dark art, "For me, it's always better to write it down and let it loose so I can come back and feel normal. When you repress that stuff and never give it a voice, it ends up coming out unconsciously. It can be devastating in a lot of ways." Cusack responds, in part, "It's not the light and the exclusion of the dark. It's the synthesis of the two that makes us human and gives us all of our creativity, power, and vision. Nobody has got any vision who hasn't peered into the abyss. I'm sorry. I haven't met anybody who does."

Taylor also describes the power of playing beneath a mask, as he does with Slipknot: "For me, there are so many different emotions going on during a Slipknot show that you can always use it to tap into that unbridled id and cross back and forth between scream therapy and pure emotion. I've always thought I'm showing more than I'm hiding by wearing that mask, jumping out on that stage, and doing that stuff. It's almost like showing the audience that pressure valve and being able to let it blow wide open and go for it."